


Storm in A Teacup

by Leia_Naberrie



Series: Dr. Parker [1]
Category: The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, between an older man and a younger girl, but will get there, not quite Underage yet, the start of some UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 13:05:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8846230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leia_Naberrie/pseuds/Leia_Naberrie
Summary: Kai Parker returns to the country after a year of hunting Travellers and demons. News about Sheila Bennett's death sends him to Virginia. And he arrives not a moment too soon as the shady Professor Shane is trying to sink his claws into Sheila's grand-daughter, witch prodigy Bonnie Bennett. Kai owes a debt to Sheila but that might not be the only reason why he sticks around...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Dr. Parker Notes: In this AU, Kai and Jo merge when he’s 22. He wins. 16 years later, he comes to Mystic Falls to repay a debt to his old friend, Sheila Bennett and look out for her grand-daughter who’s got herself mixed up with vampires, doppelgangers, shady professors and Expression magic. Season 3 & 4 mix-and-match AU. Older!Kai/younger!Bonnie.

It built inside Bonnie like a balloon, only heavier, more explosive, more dangerous if it burst…

_… like a bomb…_

But she didn’t care. She could control this. She _was_ controlling this. Magic. Complete access to her own power. Without having to beg or bargain or get permission from the spirits. Power literally at her fingertips.

She laughed.

Across the candelabra, Shane grinned.

“Am I interrupting something?”

The balloon burst. 

The flames rose, almost as high as half the length of the room.

“Bonnie,” Shane said sharply. “Look at me.”

She couldn’t. She was grasping at the threads of control as they slipped from her fingers.

“What is going on here?” asked the stranger.

Shane sounded rattled. “Dr Parker, maybe you can come back later- _Bonnie!”_

The windows were rattling. It was a bright sunny day a few minutes ago. Now a storm was gathering.

“Bonnie, control!” Shane shouted. “Look at me.”

He grabbed her chin and she snapped. 

A window shattered. Cold spray entered the room. A curtain wrapped itself around a candle and caught.

“Bonnie!” Shane shouted and vaguely, she could feel him trying to make her lock gazes with him. But she couldn’t see anything but blood and flames, and her own magic spiralling out of her reach, reaching for everything in its part. 

And then suddenly, there was a pressure on her shoulders - and asif a channel had opened through her skin, all that wild magic came rushing back at her - and out of her. She cried out, instinctively chasing after it, but it slipped through her and out of her, as rapidly as it had escalated before.

Then the grip on her shoulders fell away and the darkness claimed her.  

* * *

Dr. Kai Parker gently placed the blanket over the unconscious girl on the couch. Carefully, he tested her aura and was relieved to sense that she was tired, but unharmed. He had siphoned too rapidly and she had passed out from the pain but he had no choice. He had to act quickly otherwise she’d have brought the building down, but not before imploding. 

She looked sixteen, seventeen at the most. Too young to be a freshman. A child, really. Kai didn’t want to think of what dealings Shane had with this girl.

He was just going to put an end to them. 

He turned to the professor who was standing in the middle of the broken window shards examining the damage to his room. He looked up as Kai approached with a small grin, “I don’t supposed you could help me clean this up-”

Shane’s voice cut off abruptly and he grabbed his throat, choking. His right fist still clenched, Kai flicked his left hand and sent Shane flying across the room.

“W-what t-the ’ell?” Shane managed to choke out, scrambling on the floor as Kai approached him. He had landed on glass and his palms were cut and bleeding.

“I actually thought of just flinging you out the window right now,” Kai said casually. “Do the world a favour. My coven has a policy of not murdering mundanes but if anyone deserves to be an exception, it’s you.”

“I-I.” Shane’s face was turning blue. Kai squeezed his right fist for good measure, then opened his palm. Blood rushed to the other man’s face and he turned over his side, choking and gasping. 

“I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m just helping her. She lost her magic. I’m showing her-”

“You’re just teaching Sheila Bennett’s granddaughter to access Expression magic. I leave the country for less than a year and you try to get your claws into her?”

“I am _helping_ her. Living in Mystic Falls without magic… she’d be dead in a month.”

“Her ancestors stripped her of magic for a reason. Did you tell her about the twelve? Or during your magic lessons, did you forget to mention the ritual sacrifice?”

Shane stayed silent. He had crawled into a sitting position, and made no move to get up. A decision that Kai thought was very wise. 

“And you of all people should know what happens when even an experienced witch tries to use Expression.” Anger rose up in Kai and his voice twisted into a snarl. “That was the point, wasn’t it? Sacrifice a Bennett witch to raise Silas and get your wife and child back?”

Shane raised his chin, defiantly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Your wife? You’re married, Professor Shane?”

Both men whirled around.

Sheila’s grand-daughter was awake. She was sitting on the couch, staring at Shane with a tragic expression on her face. 

* * *

Kai was taking her home. It wasn’t a request. 

She wasn’t keen - actually, she outrightly refused - and Kai left it to Shane to convince her otherwise. While she argued with Shane, Kai gave the professor a hard look, turned his gaze deliberately to the window, then back at Shane.

Hopefully, that made it clear that the option to throw Shane out of the window was still very much on the table. 

So Shane ended up convincing Sheila’s grand-daughter to go with Kai, with the the promise to speak to her later and ‘explain everything’. Kai bristled at how much influence the man clearly had over her. That conversation was never going to happen, if he had anything to say about that. 

They started the four hours drive to Mystic Falls. Kai was exhausted. It was barely two hours since he off-boarded from the plane. He could have easily put her on a bus back to Mystic Falls but the least he could do for Sheila’s progeny was deposit her in person in her house. 

And he needed to pick her brains to find out just how deep her relationship with Shane went. 

The first half of the drive to Mystic Falls was mostly silent. When they stopped to fill up the gas, he asked her if she wanted a snack and she shrugged. He bought six bag of pork rinds and tossed one on her seat. He had eaten his way through two by the time she came out of the gas station bathroom.

She eyed the snack skeptically, and murmured her thanks. She took one tentative bite, scrunched up her delicate nose, and placed the bag in the pocket of the door.

Kai glanced at her from the corner of his eye and snorted. “Don’t tell me you’re on a diet,” he drawled as he pulled onto the highway.

“It’s not my choice of poison,” she retorted.

“No, that would be death by magic.”

She flinched.

“Your grandmother should have taught you better than to deal with mundanes who know too much about magic.”

“My grandmother didn’t teach me a lot about magic, apparently,” Bonnie muttered. Then she checked herself. “You knew my grandmother?”

“Far longer than your Professor Shane ever did.” 

There was silence. He could practically hear her mind spinning. 

“How much of our conversation did you hear?”

The girl shifted. “Enough.”

“What I said about Expression? About needing a ritual sacrifice?”

She nodded, gave him a cagey glance. 

“And of everything you heard, the one thing you react to is Shane being married?”

She flushed, her skin turning a rosy hue, and turned sharply to the window.

Kai’s fingers around the wheel clenched and he imagined his hands wrapped around Shane’s throat just so. Just how deep did his relationship with this girl go?

“Are you and Shane-”

She whirled back. “No, of course not!”

Her eyes were green, he noted, and they flashed when she was angry. 

“But you have feelings for him?”

“Excuse me, Dr. … Parker, right? But I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”

Brat. 

“It should be someone’s business,” he retorted. “When I first saw you I thought you had to be at least a freshman. Turns out you’re not even out of high school yet here you are, attending private lessons with Shane at the local university. How old are you… seventeen? sixteen?”

“I’m almost eighteen,” she said through gritted teeth.

Kai snorted. “Almost. Wow, that really makes a difference. Look at you, practically an adult. I’m going to take a wild guess and imagine Rudy has no idea of your extracurricular classes.”

He took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot a glare at her. Those large green eyes were almost falling out of her head.

“You know my Dad?” Her voice became suspicious, almost fearful. “How do you know so much about my family? Who exactly are you?”

“Your precious professor vouched for me, remember? That was enough for you two hours’s ago.”

She blushed again. “He’s not _my_  professor. Stop… insinuating things. Nothing is going on between me and Shane. He’s just helping me with my magic.”

“He’s a mundane who knows a few parlour tricks and thinks he can play with things he has no way of understanding. He’s got you involved in some very dangerous magic and he’s using you.”

She shrugged.

Just a dainty little roll of her shoulders. He almost ran them off the road. That was how angry it made him. 

“That’s it? I tell you he’s putting your life in danger and using you and you … shrug?”

She shrugged _again_.

“Stop that,” he said, his voice just one decibel short of a shout.

She lifted one shoulder half-way, and then put it down. “I guess I’m kind of used to it,” she said, quietly.

“Used to what? Being endangered or being used?”

Her shoulder twitched. He almost reached out and clamped his hand over it. 

“Both,” she answered.

He kept his focus on the road, a thousand and one thoughts running through his head as he forced himself to calm down and not completely lose his temper or give into that other feeling opening up inside him.

Self-disgust.

“That’s wrong. You’re just a kid.”

“I’ve been through more in my life than lots of people twice my age.”

Kai shook his head again. Not anymore. Not if he had anything to do about it.

Sheila had asked him to look out for her grand-daughter. And he had meant to, really he had. But he had been busy. With leading the coven. With his other full time job of being a consultant surgeon in several hospitals. There wasn’t enough time in between to check on a girl younger than the twins who lived half the country away. A girl untrained and uninitiated in magic. With a protective father. A peaceful, obscure existence in a backwater little town. She was supposed to have been safe. 

Excuses. Excuses. Excuses. 

He owed his - if not his life, but at least his - freedom to Sheila Bennett. If not for her, he’d probably be in a Prison world somewhere, kept alive for the eighteen years it would take Luke and Liv to be old enough to merge and displace him, then his father would release him and have him killed. It was Sheila that had protected him, and had convinced the coven that the merge had taken - that the sociopath he was before he merged with Jo was no more. 

Sheila Bennett had only ever asked one thing of him in return. 

And he had failed her. 

That was going to change.

* * *

He was silent for a long time after that. Lines of brooding had etched between his eyes as he stared fixedly ahead, and his knuckles were white where they gripped the wheel. 

Bonnie had no idea what she said that had upset him so badly. 

But she had questions of her own, as well.

“Dr Parker?” She said, tentatively. 

He glanced at her, then back at the road. “Yes?”

“You called Shane a _mundane_ , right? Does that mean what I think it does? Someone that doesn’t have magic?”

“Or is otherwise un-supernatural, yes.”

He sounded calm enough but that didn’t set her any more at ease. Everything about this man intimidated her. Not least of all, her knowing so little about him.

Not for the first time, she wished she hadn’t let Shane talk her into following this Dr Parker home.

“Are you a witch?” she asked now, bluntly, voicing the suspicion that had plagued her since she woke up in Shane’s battered office, in the middle of a conversation that she barely understood. “I mean wizard - er… warlock?”

Dr Parker snorted. Then he laughed. He glanced at her, still laughing, and shook his head, turning back to the glass.

Bonnie stared at him in shock. Everything about his face changed when he laughed. His otherwise cold eyes, his stern face, his disapproving mouth. They all morphed into something warmer, gentler, softer, younger.

Her heart constricted. 

“Witch. Not a ‘male’ witch,” he said, still chuckling. “Just witch. I hear the young men these days prefer wizard because of those Potter books. Just call me a witch. I’m one. Just like you.” He turned his head a fraction, and smiled, then turned back.

Bonnie swallowed and stared straight ahead. For the rest of the journey, she fought the urge to stare at him, search for a glimpse of that other face that he showed when he laughed. 

They didn’t speak again until they entered Mystic Falls. 

 


End file.
